A Doylestown lawyer is in big trouble with the feds, charged with insider trading and making false statements under oath.

Herbert Sudfeld, a 64-year-old man from Doylestown, Pennsylvania, was indicted Thursday, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. He faces two counts of securities fraud, three counts of making a false statement, and one count of “aiding and abetting.” Read more »

Federal prosecutors said Wednesday they’re bringing charges against Malcolm Segal — a 69-year-old from Langhorne, Pennsylvania — whom they say stole over $3 million from clients while he worked as a financial advisor at Aegis Capital Corporation. Read more »

Now that it’s been confirmed that Alexander Hamilton will be replaced by a woman on the ten-dollar bill, there’s talk that we should do the same for Andrew Jackson and the twenty. There’s already a host of ladies in the running to replace Hamilton, including historic names like the great Harriet Tubman and Eleanor Roosevelt, which means one of them will likely earn the prominent spot on the $20 if things decide to go that way. They’re all great choices, but wouldn’t it be quite the triumph to have someone local? Someone like, say, Tina Fey? One blogger on Huffington Post is arguing her case, tongue-and-cheek as it may be. The writer’s stance:

“Well, to be honest, I’m still sucking on my mother’s tit. … Oh, and I think I’m older than you.” That’s how my date described himself during our first face-to-face encounter at a restaurant along Walnut Street.

Is it any wonder I didn’t feel a magnetic attraction, that I didn’t beg for date two?! There was something utterly gross going on—tit-sucking mom talk aside. (I had seen pictures of his mother on Facebook, and it was not pretty). Don’t get me wrong: He was handsome. But he spent half the evening bragging about how much money he had.

It started with him making it very, very, very clear that he lived in an upscale Rittenhouse condo and that he was a “big boss” at a corporate office on Market Street. I could barely get in a word as we nursed our cocktails: He pontificated about how he purchased an $8,000 camel-hair couch and asked me where my last vacation was. When I told him Las Vegas, he rolled his eyes.

“I could never go there,” he said. “It’s tacky, and with all the work I’ve had done on my face, there is no way I could just sit at a pool and lay in the sun.” Read more »

Only two months after its Christmas Day release, American Sniper, starring Jenkintown’s Bradley Cooper, is on track to become the highest-grossing film of 2014, overtaking the current No. 1 placeholder, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1. Deadline reports that Sniper, whose box office stands at $322.59 million to date, should surpass Mockingjay’s current $336.45 million standing by the second week of March. More:

Florida Gov. Rick Scott waves after the swearing in for his second term as governor of Florida at the Florida state capitol in Tallahassee, Fla., Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2015. The inauguration took place in front of the Old Capitol. (AP Photo/Mark Wallheiser)

Florida Gov. Rick Scott will be in Pennsylvania next week, ostensibly on a mission to steal businesses from the state and take them back to his sunny home. The odd thing is, some of Pennsylvania’s leading business and conservative organizations are cheering him on.Read more »

In Pennsylvania, it really is true that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.

Actually, strike that: The very rich are getting richer — and everybody else is is getting poorer.

A new study shows that the average income of the state’s families grew between 2009 and 2013, but only because the top 1 percent earned so much more than the other 99 percent of Pennsylvania residents: Everybody else — the bottom 99 percent of Pennsylvania families — saw their collective income decline by 1.1 percent.

“The pattern is the same across all the states, which is the income is increasingly flowing up,” said Mark Price, an analyst with Pennsylvania’s Keystone Research Center. “It’s worse some places than others.”

The new year brought a new, higher minimum wage to New Jersey: It went up 13 cents, to $8.38, under a new law that automatically raises the wage each year to match increases in the Consumer Price Index.Read more »

The Inquirer’s Tricia Nadolny has a great look today at efforts to pass a $15 minimum wage in Philadelphia. It probably wouldn’t be universal — City Council wants to protect small businesses from the expense, but is happy to let larger corporations bear the burden — and there are significant legal hurdles to overcome.Read more »